via @demarinifp
UPDATE: The final 8 College World Series teams have been set:
Florida – Easton
UCLA – Easton
Texas A&M – Rawlings
LSU – Louisville Slugger
Oregon – Demarini
Washington – Demarini
Oklahoma – Rawlings
Baylor – Demarini
Ladies, don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you. We know you all love your bats as much as the guys do! With the NCAA regionals well underway, we decided to take a look at the bat usage by brand to see what manufacturer is leading the pack this year. Every year, the NCAA playoffs give us our first look at the new lines of softball bats ready to hit the market.
Judging by the pie chart below, Wilson is absolutely cleaning up shop between the Louisville Slugger and Demarini brands. Together they represent more than half of the teams in the tournament. This year Easton (9) and Rawlings (8) follow the Wilson family. In 2016, Rawlings and Oklahoma brought home the national championship. We found 6 schools in our research who’s usage was “mixed.” Four of those six teams were Slugger / Demarini, which adds even more schools to the overall Wilson representation.
The following chart shows the field of 64 breakdown by bat brand usage. Each value will show the bat company, number of schools represented and percentage of the total playoff field.
Below you’ll see a geographical breakdown showing brand usage per state in the field of 64. The bigger the circle, the more schools that are located in the state. The circles are split into mini pie charts representing the different manufactures. While it is similar to the same information as above, we thought that this was a cool way of looking at things.
Models To Watch For
Here is a list of bat models to be on the lookout for when tuning into the Regional, Super Regional and College World Series coverage on tv. Many of you will be familiar with most of the 2017 models, but we are including the brand new 2018 models as well so you can check out what the best players in the country are swinging!
Louisville Slugger LXT Hyper – Currently 15% Off
Louisville Slugger Xeno Plus – Currently 15% Off
Demarini CF9 – Currently 15% Off
Easton Stealth Flex – Currently 20% Off
2018 Models that you will most likely see:
If you’re a softball fan, it doesn’t get much better than this time of year. The best of the best will be flat out competing for the right to call themselves a national champion. For everyone else, it will give us a glimpse of what the upcoming year holds for high end bats. This is the first of many softball-focused articles. Like baseball, we plan on supplying you with the best performance bat information available. Keep checking back here or in the WPW app for new posts. If you want to see us cover a specific topic, feel free to reach out to me via email Aaron@WhatProsWear.com or @thebatscout on Instagram.
